Voolavex

Appreciation and Depreciation April 8, 2014

In a blinding epiphany last night, I realized that I am beginning to appreciate my life Accomplishments are not appreciation.  Accomplishments are simply the things you have done and they have a positive aura – but even robbing a bank can be a sort of accomplishment.  It is not so much the “aha” moments – but the number of them that snowball down the side of our individual middens as we careen through the years. And we do careen – I can’t walk a straight line in bare feet anymore.  Sad.  True.

In my case it was like suddenly understanding string theory or hearing the music of the spheres or realizing that all the crap I think is crap IS crap.  I no longer ask why we cling to our 2nd Amendment rights, nor shoot each other or serial kill each other – that’s what we watch on the screen.  Big, little, on demand, anytime – click and kill.  There’s an app for it.  But I now appreciate that this is what is happening and I can see it and despair or see it and know I will not change my direction due to it. For example; I do not own a gun.  The reason is simple.  Fear that I will use it.  Most people don’t actually think of this when they shy away from the gun issue.  They are afraid it will get into the wrong hands, they hate guns,  it won’t make a difference in the long haul.  Not me.  I am simply afraid I will not be afraid, I will be the wrong hands and I will use it.  My feeling is that to own a gun you must be willing to use it.  My fear is that I would.  So no gun.  But it is the appreciation of that knowledge that anchors me and lets me out of the whole argument.  Guns may not kill people, but people with guns do.  I am grateful I am not a bigot.  I like being a Jew.  I do not trust Putin. I know I am being watched. I treasure the right to vote and still get a frisson of joy when I do it. I do not miss having grandchildren (from my own kids).

As I really begin to appreciate these small things, other smaller ones follow.  I hate to go to movies.  Very simple.  I do not like to go. And I get so many arguments (not offers) and find myself using hackneyed phrases like “it’s not my cup of tea” – and this works because everyone knows what a cup of tea is.    I have no desire to own property. I have by and large always been a cliff dweller (as my mother would say) and I like apartment living. It’s not for everyone, but it is for me.  And all this appreciation is not always positive.  I realize that I was a very terrible mother – something two other adults know too.  And in the fullness of knowing comes the reality there is nothing I can do to go back and do better. Even though I know better.  But I do know it and I can say it and I know why it is true.  I don’t want to have a dog.  I do like the way many dogs look, but they are not an animal that lures me. For some this is character flaw – but it’s just what I know.As I know I like red meat. And these shocks of wisdom – as I personally depreciate and time becomes more scarce also allow me to let stuff go.  Like movie theaters, mortgages and dusting.  They allow me to read India (my preferred subject matter), mystery novels, genetics, Jewish history, and anything else whose title sounds alluring.   Because I appreciate that time does flow like a river and we all sink at some point as we float.

Is there a message in all this – kinda.  If you can feel the shocks of appreciation, wait for even more. You will get them and for the fortunate ones who do, they will lighten it up as you drift – the buoyancy will astonish you as it does me and you may even appreciate that our demographic may be the last who can do this and probably because there is no app for it.